Dennis Matthews Elected SPIE Fellow

Dennis Matthews, PhD, co-chair of the Biophotonics4Life Worldwide Consortium, has been promoted to the rank of Fellow of SPIE, the international society of optics and photonics.  Fellows are "SPIE Members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement, for their service to the general optics community, and to SPIE in particular."  Dr. Matthews and 28 other new Fellows were honored at an award ceremony luncheon during Photonics West attended by 2,000 SPIE members.

Dr. Matthews is professor emeritus at the University of California Davis, director of the NSF Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology, and associate director for biomedical technology for the Comprehensive Cancer Center at UC Davis.  He is the principal investigator on a number of grants including the NSF Ecosystem for Biophotonics, and is site director of the Center for Biophotonics Sensors and Systems, an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.  A former program and division leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he is responsible for developing new biotechnology programs for the lab.

Credited with inventing the x-ray laser at LLNL, Dr. Matthews' career has included an ongoing interest in the translation and commercialization of new physical science and engineering technologies to address grand challenges in medicine and life sciences.

Dr. Matthews is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Society of Photo an Industrial Engineers, and the Optical Society of America.  He is the author of more than 275 publications, holds 30 patents, and is the co-editor or the Journal of Biophotonics.